This map of Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata basin is the work of Willem Blaeu (1571-1638), the founder of a famous Dutch mapmaking dynasty. Blaeu studied astronomy, mathematics, and globe-making with the Danish scholar Tycho Brahe before establishing his mapmaking studio in Amsterdam. In 1633, he was appointed mapmaker of the Dutch East India Company. In 1635, together with his sons Joan and Cornelis, Blaeu published the Atlas Novus (New atlas), an 11-volume work consisting of 594 maps.

This 1894 map of Bolivia highlights the country’s main geographic features, including the Andes Mountains in the west and the lowlands in the east. The map shows major towns and cities, the capitals of departments, departmental borders, completed and projected railroads, highways, and navigable rivers. Mines for copper, gold, silver, and tin are indicated, reflecting Bolivia’s role as a major mineral producer. Neighboring parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and Peru are shown. Territory in the northeastern part of the country, near the border with Brazil, is identified ...

This 1912 map shows the agricultural, forest, and mineral wealth of Bolivia. Mineral production is shown as located mainly in the western part of the country, in or near the Andes Mountains. The locations of mines producing antimony, bismuth, copper, gold, lead, silver, wolfram, and tin, Bolivia’s most important mineral product, are indicated. Tin was mined in the departments of Cochabamba, La Paz, Oruro, and Potosí. Production boomed in the late-19th century–early 20th century, as the extension of the rail line to Oruro made possible the export of ...

This 1855 map of Peru and Bolivia shows topographical features, cities, towns, forts, rapids, and rivers. National and regional boundaries are marked in pink, green, yellow, and blue. An inset map of Lima, the capital of Peru, appears in the lower-left-hand corner. In the upper right are the River Madeira, forming part of the border between Peru and Brazil, and the Amazon, the upper parts of which are known in Peru as the Marañón and in Brazil as the Solimões. A note indicates the navigability of the River Ucayali up ...

This map shows the present-day Bolivian provinces of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Chiquitos, and the Brazilian state of Mata Grosso. The map indicates the settlements of native people, known at that time as Chiquitos. This area was a center of Jesuit activity and many of the settlements may have been the remnants of Jesuit centers, called reducciones (reductions or townships). The Jesuits began their missionary work in South America in 1609. At the height of their activity, they sponsored 40 communities that were home to more than 150 ...

Constitvciones de la provincia de Sant Antonio de los Charcas hechas y recebidas en el capitulo prouincial celebrado en el Conuento de San Francisco dela Ciudad dela Paz(Constitutions of the province of San Antonio de los Charcas issued and received in the Provincial Chapter celebrated in the Convent of Saint Francis of the city of La Paz) was published in Lima, Peru, in 1616. San Antonio de los Charcaswas a province of the Viceroyalty of Peru, located in what is now Bolivia. The provincial capital was La Paz ...

Sermon en la mverte del maestro Don Fray Lvys Lopez de la Orden de sant Augustin Obispo de Quito se publicó (Sermon by the Reverend Father Diego de Castro on the death of Father Luis Lopez, Bishop of Quito and elected Bishop of Charcas, of the Order of Saint Augustine) was published in Lima, Peru, in 1606. Luis López de Solís was appointed bishop of Quito, Ecuador, in September 1592. He was appointed archbishop of La Plata o Charcas (present-day Bolivia) in July 1605, and he died on July 5 ...

Nicolas Sanson (1600-67) is considered by many to be the founder of the French school of cartography. Originally from Abbeville, he was also known as Sanson d’Abbeville. He was trained as a military engineer but became a prolific cartographer who produced over 300 maps. Around 1643, he began publishing maps, working with publisher Pierre Mariette. This 1680 map of the Amazon most likely is a reprint by his son Guillaume (1633-1703), who carried on the family firm after Nicolas’s death. The account referred to in the title is ...

S. Augustus Mitchell was born in Connecticut in 1790 and became a teacher. He found the materials available in early 19th-century America for teaching geography inadequate and, after moving to Philadelphia in 1829 or 1830, formed a company that soon was producing improved maps, atlases, tourist guides, and geography textbooks. Mitchell issued the first edition of his New Universal Atlas in 1846. His son, S. Augustus Mitchell, Jr., took over the firm in about 1860. He published Mitchell’s New General Atlas from which these maps of five South American ...

This map reflects the tangled history of relations between the United States and Central America. In 1855-57, the American adventurer William Walker established himself as the dictator of Nicaragua with the help of disaffected Central Americans and a motley assortment of fellow adventurers from the United States. Walker had in mind the formation of a Central American federation with himself as leader. As a Southerner, he also was suspected of wanting to extend American slavery to new territories outside the United States. France and Britain, which had interests in Central ...

This photograph of a Bolivian woman is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. Max T. Vargas ...

Franz Keller was a German engineer who spent 17 years in Brazil. In 1867, Keller and his father were commissioned by the minister of public works in Rio de Janeiro to explore the Madeira River in order to determine the feasibility of building a railroad to circumvent rapids that made steamship navigation impossible on part of the river. This book, published some seven years later, describes the river and its rapids, the native tribes that Keller and his party encountered, and the animals and vegetation of the virgin forest of ...

Acarete du Biscay was a Frenchman, possibly of Basque origin, about whom very little is known. In December 1657 he embarked from Cádiz, Spain for the Plate River region of South America, posing as the nephew of a Spanish gentleman to circumvent a ban by Spain on visits by foreigners to its New World possessions. In 1658 he traveled overland across the Argentine pampas to the silver mines of Potosí, located in present-day Bolivia. In 1672, Acarete published an account of this trip in his native French. A later version ...

Between 1609 and 1780, the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) established an autonomous Christian Indian state on the territory of present-day Paraguay, Uruguay, and parts of Argentina and Brazil. After unsuccessful efforts to Christianize the warlike Guaycurú Indians of northeastern Paraguay, the Jesuits concentrated on organizing the Guaraní Indians into a series of reducciones (reductions or townships), in which a kind of communal living was practiced. The system of reductions was an attempt to correct earlier abuses, in which the Paraguayan Indians were transformed into virtual slaves who ...

This photograph from Bolivia shows indigenous peoples dressed in traditional costume playing musical instruments. The photograph is from the collection of the Columbus Memorial Library of the Organization of American States (OAS), which includes 45,000 photographs illustrative of life and culture in the Americas. Many of the photographs were taken by prominent photographers on OAS missions to member countries. The OAS was established in April 1948 when 21 countries of the western hemisphere adopted the OAS Charter, in which they reaffirmed their commitment to the pursuit of common goals ...

This photograph shows a group of dancers in elaborate costumes in a band at the Carnival of Oruro in Bolivia. The carnival, which takes place every year, lasts ten days and features examples of popular arts in such forms as masks, textiles, and embroidery. The main event is the procession or entrada, in which the dancers walk the four-kilometer processional route repeatedly for a full 20 hours without interruption. In 2001, UNESCO proclaimed the Carnival of Oruro a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The photograph is ...

This photograph shows a carnival dancer in Oruro, Bolivia, in an elaborate costume and grotesque mask and gloves. The carnival, which takes place every year, lasts ten days and features examples of popular arts in such forms as masks, textiles, and embroidery. The main event is the procession or entrada, in which the dancers walk the four-kilometer processional route repeatedly for a full 20 hours without interruption. In 2001, UNESCO proclaimed the Carnival of Oruro a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The photograph is from the ...

This photograph of La Paz, Bolivia is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855–1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography, whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890–1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. As ...

This photograph of a woman in Bolivia is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855–1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography, whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890–1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives ...

This photograph from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress depicts an Aymara Indian in Bolivia in the early part of the 20th century. Frank G. Carpenter (1855–1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography, whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890–1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 ...

This Spanish-language poster is one in a series issued by the American Red Cross during World War I featuring the flags of the countries allied or associated with the United States in the war. This poster shows two Red Cross nurses. One nurse, depicted as a Madonna figure, cradles in her arms a wounded soldier on a litter between the flags of Bolivia and the United States. The title reads: “Emblemas de la libertad y de la humanidad. La Cruz Roja, madre de todas las naciones” (Emblems of liberty and ...

This hand-colored map of the northern part of South America originally appeared in A New General Atlas Exhibiting The Five Great Divisions of the Globe, published by John Grigg (1792-1864) in Philadelphia in 1829. It shows the still somewhat vague demarcation of the borders between countries in the interior of the continent. Grigg’s atlas was based on the work of Conrad Malte-Brun (1755-1826), a Danish geographer who emigrated to France in 1799, where in 1803-07 he produced the six-volume Géographie mathématique, physique et politique de toutes les parties du ...

This pen-and-ink watercolor map shows the Iténez-Guaporé River Basin. The map shows the location of the fortress of Nossa Senhora da Conceição dos Portugueses and the deployment of Spanish troops under command of Alonso Berdugo and Aymerich Tete. This river, now known in Brazil as the Guaporé, forms the border between the Brazilian provinces of Rondônia and Mato Grosso, before flowing north into Bolivia, where it is known as the Iténez.